Date: Mon, 8 Sep 1997 14:13:36 +0200 (MET DST)
Message-Id: <199709081213.OAA28041@stovner.a.sol.no>
To: "Rob" <wlkngowl@unix.asb.com>
Cc: www-html@w3.org
In-Reply-To: <199709060027.UAA08633@unix.asb.com>
From: Hakon Lie <howcome@w3.org>
Subject: a "clear: smart" feature in CSS?
Rob writes:
> A common problem when laying out pages:
>=20
> <img src=3D"relatively-large.gif" align=3Dleft>
> <p>This is a long paragraph describing stuff blah blah blah...
> (ok, it's not that long but pretent it is for the sake of argument)=
> </p>
>=20
> On browsers with even medium-sized windows, it looks fine. The image=
=20
> is on the left and on the right is the text.
>=20
> But when the window is smaller (say using frames on a lower-
> resolution screen) the paragraph is still on the right side of the
> image, but only one word per line, which looks pretty ugly.
> A better solution would be a "clear: smart-right" (or smart-left
> etc.) attribute in CSS. If there's plenty of room for text or
> images on the right hand side, it won't clear. If there's not enough=
> room (text cannot be rendered with more than two words per line: I=20=
> can't think of a good general formula for this at the moment) that
> it would clear. A browser or renderer that doesn't have the
> 'smart's would clear for all instances rather than risk ugly
> output.=20
In essence, this "smart" behavior is already built into CSS1 [1]:
"The 'width' has a non-negative UA-defined minimum value (which may
vary from element to element and even depend on other properties). I=
f
'width' goes below this limit, either because it was set explicitly,=
or because it was 'auto' and the rules below would make it too small=
,
the value will be replaced with the minimum value instead."
[1] http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS1#horizontal-formatting
I.e., UAs should be smart about this no matter what the value of the
'width' or 'clear' property is.
Regards,
-h&kon
H =E5 k o n W i u m L i e
howcome@w3.org http://www.w3.org/people/howcome
World W i d e Web Consortium